NGK + Selvaraghavan + Suriya = Can’t wait!

I’m hoping the chance to work with a big star who’s not his brother animates Selvaraghavan, and the chance to work with a truly original writer-director recharges Suriya.

The NGK trailer is out. Is the acronym, which expands to “Nandha Gopalan Kumaran” just a string of names? Or is there something more? Is it, perhaps, a reference to (or at least a derivation from) the Thiruppavai, whose first verse contains those names, in that exact order: “Koorvel kodunthozhilan Nandagopan Kumaran”. This is a line about Krishna, the son (kumaran) of the spear (koorvel)-wielding Nanda, the head of the cow-herding Gopa tribe. I guess we’ll know when the film comes out, but the idle curiosity about the title apart, NGK is fascinating to think about, given that it unites Selvaraghavan and Suriya. Will the former find himself in the safe commercial zone of the latter, or will we find the actor moulding himself to fit into the jagged edges of this director? The answer to just this question alone should make the film a must-watch.

I hope this is the good Selvaraghavan rather than the bad one. He has this bipolar syndrome when it comes to filmmaking. The same goes for Surya. I am not sure about his attempts to playing to the gallery. He is not an effortles performer like Vikram or even Vijay when it comes to being a mass hero. You can see him straining hard as in the singham films. The trailer was not very impressive, Hope the film is better

Al other combos sounded fine but Vishal a big star??? I seriously doubt even he would agree with that😂. The trailer of NGK looks more like a KV Anand movie than a selvaraghavan one. Guess Dhanush is the only actor who straddles effortlessly between artsy and commercial. And VJS is the zone now where it doesn’t seem to matter to him or the audience whether it’s commercial r artsy. He is seriously blurring the line between the two. Al he touches seems to b turning to gold.

I can watch Selva’s movies inspite of his characters’ perversions and narcissistic nature mainly because together as a cinema he tries to bring something new to the table. Surya’s last real good outing was probably in “Mayavi” (in most of the rest he didn’t register anything new). It is an exciting combo but still fingers crossed (considering they had to reshoot the movie as it had some similarities with “Notta”?!)..

@OdiyanHater: >> Has selvaraghavan ever cast a non fair skinned heroine (Reema Sen in aayirathil oruvan is not a heroine)?

You can replace Selvaraghavan’s name with most directors in Tamil cinema and get the same question. A sad reality. Even if one focuses only on the bigger directors (Mani Rathnam, Vetrimaaran, etc.), it’s probably still the same. Oh well.

One could argue — “could” being the operative word — that Selva’s fair-skinned heroines are not the same as the Tamannahs and the Hansikas, in terms of how they are projected and how they are used.

In Selva’s most typical films, there is a distance between hero and heroine — and this distance is amplified by several factors like economic stratum, education level, etc. The dark-skinned hero and fair-skinned heroine is yet another way this “distance” manifests itself.

It’s never seemed to me as random as, say, Maan Karate, where you have Hansika just because… well, she’s Hansika.

@BR: “The dark-skinned hero and fair-skinned heroine is yet another way this “distance” manifests itself.”

This is a fantastic observation! Apart from the hero vs way-out-of-his-league heroine, my other favorite Selva trope is the dynamic between the hero and his father. It’s a universe away from the GVM dad-son relationships 🙂

Sneha in Pudhupettai, Nandita and Regina in the unreleased Nenjam Marapadillai, Anushka in Irandam Ulagam are some other examples of non-fair-complexioned heroines. My problem is all his actors emote the same way. Long pauses, a headshake that reminds of early Danush while delivering lines, unwavering stares. pitched up noses. Rarely has an actor brought his/her own game to the party except a few good ones like Danush, Sneha, Karthi and Parthiban.

Curious to see what Surya, another good actor with forgotten skills brings to Selva’s world, if it indeed is Selva’s world. The trailer promises more of a Sivakarthikeyan’s world than Selva’s.

As someone who is doing A Level History based on Hitler, this shares the same feel of a politically passionate person working his way up to the top by legal means rather than something like Sarkar where it protagonist vs antagonist.